Doctors are supposed to protect life. They are respected and
trusted precisely because they devote their lives to preserving life. That’s
why when the story broke last month about doctors so callously and casually taking
life—especially innocent, defenseless life—Americans reacted with outrage.

The New York Timesdescribedthe story as “cruel” and predicted that it would prompt much-needed
“soul-searching” among those who promote, perpetuate and participate in the
industry.

“This crosses an ethical line,” a PR firm gravely concluded.

Predictably, the story triggered protests outside medical
facilities. “Murderer!” shouted one protester. The words “ROT IN HELL” were
scrawled on a sign outside the offices of one of the accused.

One caveat: None of these people were writing about or
protesting against the doctors employed by Planned Parenthood, who were caught
on tape discussing ways to preserve the organs of aborted babies for commercial
use. No, just days after those nauseating videoswere released, America’s outrage was reserved for Dr. Walter Palmer, a dentist who
illegally hunted and killed a lion in Africa.

DefendingDon’t miss the point here: This is not in any way a criticism of those who love
animals and seek to protect them. Animals are part of God’s creation. How a
person treats animals says a lot about a person’s heart. As Proverbs 12 puts
it, “A righteous man cares for the needs of his animals.” But America’s outrage
over the death of a lion in Africa and defense of what happens inside the
abortion mills is hard to reconcile.

Here’s a just tiny sampling of how some Americans are defending
the indefensible. The New York Times attackedthose who made the recording rather than those who were recorded, condemning the
“propaganda campaign to misrepresent Planned Parenthood” and “a dishonest
attempt to make legal, voluntary and potentially lifesaving tissue donations
appear nefarious and illegal.”

The Associated Press took a different tack, explaining that
there’s nothing new here, so there’s really no story: “Is using fetal tissue a
new idea? Hardly. Scientists have worked with it since the 1930s.” In fact, AP
breezily explained,
“Tissue from elective abortions and miscarriages is used for a wide
variety of purposes.”

The California attorney general launched an investigation
not of Planned Parenthood, but of the Center for Medical Progress “to see if
the organization that made the videos violated registration or reporting
requirements,” as AP reported.

Planned Parenthood’s president explained, without any sense
of irony, “This is actually laudable, that women and their families choose to
make fetal-tissue donations in order to potentially save the lives of other
folks.” What a concept: ending lives to
save lives. Condemning the videos as part of a “smear campaign,” the Planned
Parenthood Clergy Advocacy Board heapedscorn on those responsible for “the decades-long campaign of harassment against
Planned Parenthood.” According to these clergymen, Planned Parenthood is “doing
God’s work.” There really are no words for such an Orwellian worldview.

Equally inexplicable, a White House spokesman dismissedthe videos as “fraudulent.” The videos are many things—sickening, chilling,
shocking and, yes, purposely intended to entrap and expose Planned Parenthood. But
they are not fraudulent.

If anything, the unedited versions of the videos are worse than what was
released to the public.

Dr. Deborah Nucatola,
senior director of medical services for the Planned Parenthood Federation of
America (PPFA), matter-of-factly notes that post-abortion harvesting produces “anywhere
from $30 to $100” per piece of tissue. She explains how she approaches each
abortion with the organ customer’s needs “in the back of my mind”—noting how
she carefully will “crush below” and “crush above” certain parts of a baby’s
thorax to preserve high-demand organs. “We’ve been very good at getting heart,
lung, liver,” she boasts. She adds, seemingly as if to show off, that knowing
how to position the unborn child—“vertex presentation” or “breech
presentation”—enables her to “evacuate an intact calvarium,” or skull.

Importantly, Nucatola is not bothered by making money off
these morbid transactions, but by perceptions surrounding such transactions: “Every
provider has had patients who want to donate their tissue…They just want to do
it in a way that is not perceived as, ‘This clinic is selling tissue, this
clinic is making money off of this.’ I know in the Planned Parenthood world they’re
very, very sensitive to that.”

Dr. Mary Gatter,
president of the PPFA Medical Directors’ Council, is less nuanced about the
bottom line. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re used to paying,”
she begins. She assures the client that “money is not the important thing,” but
her follow-up comments belie that: “I want a Lamborghini,” she offers with a
chuckle. And so, she haggles over the cost of a “liver and thymus” and a brain
hemisphere, noting that employing methods “with less suction” will “increase
the odds that it will come out as an intact specimen.”

FailingThese stories from the summer of 2015—and America’s scrambled reactions to them—offer
a snapshot of our nation’s conscience. It’s not a pretty picture. There is
something deeply wrong about a society that hysterically condemns the killing
of a lion but callously commoditizes the killing of unborn children. This is
where the slippery slope ends: a taxpayer-funded
organization monetizing the organs of unborn children; physicians boasting
about the best ways to end a baby’s life while preserving her organs; and
clergy, major media outlets and the White House defending it all.

If the PPFA videos don’t strike a nerve inside the media or
the White House, they should for those of us who wear the pro-life label. They
are a grim reminder that we’re failing. Sure, abortion is not available in 89
percent of U.S. counties. Sure, 60 percent of Americans
want abortion to be restricted or not permitted under any circumstance. Sure, Norma
McCorvey, better known by her pseudonym “Jane Roe,” is now pro-life. But Roe
continues to scythe through America, claiming 54 million unborn children since
1973. Another 2 million pregnancies have been ended by the abortion pill. Efforts to defund
Planned Parenthood were blockedthis month in the Senate. And PPFA’s doctors, fundraisers, lawyers and administrators
continue to make a living on death.

So where does this leave us?

If only we knew God as well as the pagan people of Nineveh, we
would wrap ourselves in sackcloth and plead for forgiveness. Yet Jesus doesn’t
desire public displays of piety. He desires a change of heart. But there are so
many hearts to change.

In these dispiriting days, the first thing we have to do in
order to end this scourge is believe that it can be ended. Roe will not die if
people of faith believe in its permanency more than God’s power. He has changed
hearts before, and He can do it again. Consider the desperate plight of His
people in Egypt, where Pharaoh killed baby boys with the same cold contempt for
life displayed by PPFA. God heard the groaning of His people and ended the
killing. Yet He did this in His own time.

That leads us to a second thing we must do: pray. We should
pray for endurance. Opponents of slavery in the United States fought against
America’s original sin for almost a century. We should pray for unborn children
and their parents, for frightened moms, for selfish dads, for embarrassed
grandparents, for lawmakers and judges, for doctors and clinic workers. “The
real business of your life as a saved soul,” as Oswald Chambers wrote, “is
intercessory prayer.”

Third, we should use these videos as teachable moments,
reasoning with those who are open to reason: If lions in the wild deserve
protection, why not children in the womb? If it’s repugnant to commoditize this
or that animal, why is it OK to turn unborn human life into a harvest field? If
we are to use our energies to rescue the weak and helpless species of our
planet, shouldn’t that ethic of life also extend to the weakest and most
helpless of our species?

Fourth, we should vote for life. Given the haunting poetry
of scripture—“You knit me together in my mother’s womb”—voting for those who
defend life and not voting for those who defend the abortion status quo would
seem to be the bare minimum for a follower of Christ. Let this be our
guidepost, our true north, our bottom line at the ballot box: America must secure the last frontier of civil
rights—the right to life for the weakest among us.

Toward that end, we must urge politicians to cut off funding
for PPFA, which rakes in $528
million in government grants annually. Remember what’s not in dispute in
this PPFA controversy: Planned Parenthood destroys a child while preserving her
organs for resale. That’s what Planned Parenthood does—regardless of where its
employees fix the price, regardless of whether it’s within the technical bounds
of laws prohibiting the sale of human organs. Planned Parenthood is responsible
for almost one-thirdof all abortions in America. That’s what Planned Parenthood does.

Fifth, we must take a stand in our own corners of the world. For some, thatmight mean standing up at work. A man I know used to sell medical
supplies. When he discovered that his company was selling an instrument that
had but one, awful purpose—to speed the work of abortionists—he told his boss
he would not sell the instrument, and then he went a step further. He told his
boss the company shouldn’t either. He did the right thing, but it wasn’t too
long before he was out of a job. What if health professionals, pharmacists,
accountants, bankers, lawyers, fundraisers and foundation executives took a
similar stand for life?

Many of us work at places that allow a percentage of each
paycheck to be donated to a designated charity. What if all of us made sure none
of our resources went to Planned Parenthood or other groups that use euphemism
to cloak what they do? And what if we instead donated our time, talents and
treasure to organizations that help young moms make the right decision? Crisis-pregnancy
groups need money, diapers, baby food, clothes and helping hands. And heaven
knows America’s unborn children need these groups to rescue them from Roe. A
woman I know was part of such a rescue. She befriended an unwed mother who was
planning to have an abortion. With no money and no hope, the girl felt like she
had no choice. But because someone cared, she found that there was hope—and she
had her baby.

Of course, for some of us, taking a stand may mean adopting
one of PPFA’s would-be victims. Paul reminds us that adoption is the way God
brings us into His family. In other words, adoption a powerful expression of
love. In our age, it’s also a tangible blow against the abortion status quo,
one that has immeasurable consequences in the here-and-now and the hereafter.

Speaking of the hereafter, we will not be held
to account for failing to end abortion, but we will be held to account—each of
us—for failing to try.

Dowd writes a monthly column exploring the crossroads of faith and public policy for byFaith.